AN IMPERIAL GLUTTON

Vitellius

[169]

I

T was a curious chance that set Vitellius, ninth of
the twelve Caesars, on the Imperial throne. His father,
indeed, had been a man of no small distinction. He had
done considerable services to the State both at home
and abroad. When he held the government of the province
of Syria, an office which carried with it the charge of
the relations between the Empire and the Parthian King,
he
[170] had induced that jealous monarch to do homage to the
Roman Standards. He had been Consul three times, had
been the colleague of the Emperor in the Censorship,
and had been his vice-gerent during the British
expedition. Less creditable to him was the
extraordinary genius for flattery which he developed.
When he came back from Syria he found Caligula on the
throne. It was one of that mad prince's caprices to
fancy himself a god; Vitellius fooled him to the top of
his bent. He did not venture to approach so radiant a
being except with a veil over his face, and in a
prostrate attitude.

Claudius' weakness was a foolish fondness for a
profligate wife and for worthless freedmen. Vitellius
promptly accommodated himself to it. He begged as a
special favour from the Emperor that he might be
allowed to unfasten the Empress's shoes; and he was
wont to carry one of her slippers between his gown and
his tunic and might be seen frequently kissing it. He
must have been between sixty and seventy when he acted
this degrading part, for he had the satisfaction about
this time of seeing his two sons raised to the
consulship in the same year.

The Emperor's freedmen he complimented by putting their
busts, executed in gold, among his household gods. He
surpassed himself, when, congratulating Claudius on the
occasion of the Secular Games,
[171] (exhibited once only in a hundred years), he wished him
"many happy returns of the day." And yet he had good
qualities. Suetonius describes him as a man of energy
who never injured others, and Tacitus declares that
though many things were said, and not untruly said
against him, he showed the high qualities belonging to
better times.

Aulus, the elder of his two sons, had no such good
qualities. He showed something of his father's talent
for flattery. He ingratiated himself with Caligula by
assisting in his favorite pursuit of chariot driving;
played dice with Claudius; and delighted Nero, who,
anxious publicly to exhibit his skill on the harp, was
still ashamed to do it, by conveying to him what he
represented as the unanimous wish of the people for the
performance. Such services had of course to be
rewarded. Offices, sacred and secular, were heaped upon
him; he was sent to govern Africa, a duty which he
performed, strange to say, with singular integrity,
though in Rome he had been accused of pilfering
ornaments from the temples, and exchanging the gold and
silver for baser metals.

Then came the honour which was to prove the occasion of
his elevation and of his downfall. He was appointed to
the command of the army of Lower Germany. The choice—it
was made by Galba—astonished everyone. It was the most
important
[172] command in the Empire, for nowhere had the frontier to
be so diligently guarded, and Vitellius, who had never
seen any military service, was confessedly incompetent.

Some found the reason of this strange promotion in the
influence of Vinius. Vinius and Vitellius had been
associated as partisans of the "Blues," one of the
factions of the Circus,
amply sufficient reason, it was thought, in the eyes of
a notoriously unprincipled favourite. Others declared
that the choice was Galba's own, and was due to his
jealousy of any ability in his subordinates. "There is
no reason to be afraid of men who think of nothing but
eating," he is reported to have said. "As for
Vitellius even his boundless appetite will be satisfied
with what he finds in a province, and no one will
suppose that I chose him for any other reason but my
contempt."

The new general was so miserably poor—his means having
been wasted by extravagant living—that he was without
money for his travelling expenses. He had to let his
town mansion, putting his wife and children into hired
lodgings, while he pledged a costly pearl ear-ring which
his mother was accustomed to wear. Even then he had the
greatest difficulty in escaping a swarm of importunate
creditors, the most
[173] troublesome among them being the inhabitants of two
Italian towns, the revenues of which he had embezzled.
He contrived to get away by threatening them with an
action for defamation of character. One unfortunate man
who demanded his due somewhat energetically he accused
of personal violence, and actually recovered from him a
handsome sum of money.

The army received him with open arms. It had been
greatly irritated by the treatment it had received from
the Emperor. Verginius, its commander, a very able
soldier, and popular with his troops, was kept in
attendance at court, not because Galba liked him, but
because he suspected him. The army had indeed offered
him the Empire, and felt that it was regarded with
dislike. Accordingly, it was ready for change. The men
were strongly prepossessed in favour of Vitellius. He
was the son of a distinguished father; he had a
commanding presence; he was open-handed and
good-natured. His absolute want of courage and ability
was still unknown. His arrival was preceded by golden
reports of his affability. He was said to greet even
common soldiers with a kiss, and to mix with grooms and
casual travellers on terms of even vulgar familiarity.
Once established in head-quarters his easy and
indulgent temper showed itself. No one had to proffer a
petition in vain; soldiers degraded for misconduct were
restored to their rank; condemned criminals were
pardoned. Scarcely a
[174] month had passed before the legions saluted him
Emperor. He accepted this dignity, and was carried
round the camp, holding in his hand a sword that had
belonged to the great Julius. Some one had taken it
down from the wall of the Temple of Mars,
and presented it to him. He made no oration to the
soldiers, but the few words that he said indicated some
readiness and presence of mind. A room in the
head-quarters had caught fire, and there was general
consternation, not without a feeling that the incident
was an evil omen for the future. "Cheer up, my men!"
cried the Prince, "there is a light on the path."

The story of his march to Rome need not be told here.
The victory was won for him by his lieutenants. He
made—indeed he was called upon to make—no effort. After
the victory at Bedriacum he disbanded the whole
Praetorian Guard for having fought for his rival. Among
Otho's papers he found a hundred and twenty memorials
from persons who declared that they had had a share in
the death of Galba. He ordered all these claimants to
be put to death. Suetonius loudly praises the act as
giving the highest hopes of what a ruler he might have
been. After all it must have been dictated only by an
instinct of self-preservation. No ruler feels that the
mur- [175] der of a predecessor is a thing to be rewarded, however
much he may himself have profited by the act.

It was not long before the man's temper began to show
itself in its true light. He indulged in the most
extravagant luxury as he marched southwards. Nothing
was too costly for his travelling equipment, nothing
too recherché for his banquets. His easy temper,
too, was not inconsistent with much brutality. He
visited the field of battle at Bedriacum, when the
ground was still covered with the unburied corpses of
the slain. His suite complained of the intolerable
stench. "To me," said Vitellius, "there is nothing
sweeter than the smell of a dead enemy, especially if
he is a countryman." He was not unwilling however to
refresh himself and his companions with copious
draughts of unmixed wine. He jeered at the modest stone
which covered the remains of Otho, and ordered the
dagger with which his rival had slain himself to be
hung up in the temple of Mars in the Colonia
Agrippinensis.

The man's recklessness and folly, when he felt himself
firmly seated on the throne, exceeded all bounds. He
rode into Rome clad in his military cloak and with his
sword at his side, to the sound of martial music, while
his escort followed fully
[176] armed. It was the immemorial custom that a soldier
returning from service must put on the garb of peace
before he could pass the Gates, unless indeed the
honour of a triumph had been conferred upon him. All
Rome was shocked when he published an edict on a day
marked as unlucky in the public calendar as having been
that on which the disasters of Cremera and Allia
had happened. The respectable classes were not less
horrified when he caused a solemn funeral service to be
performed in the Field of Mars to the memory of Nero.
This was the model he seemed to propose to himself for
imitation. As to the business of government, he allowed
it to be conducted by the actors and jockeys with whom
he delighted to surround himself. It was on the
pleasures of the table that he spent his whole energy.
A Roman was commonly content with two meals a day;
Vitellius had always three, and sometimes four. He
prepared himself for these by the constant use of
emetics. His courtiers were commonly directed to supply
these entertainments. It was understood that a meal
must never cost less than £4000. But the most sumptuous
entertainment of his reign, which happily did not
extend
[177] beyond six months, was that given to him by his brother
on his arrival in Rome. At this, two thousand choice
fishes and seven thousand choice birds are said to have
been served. His own most conspicuous achievement in
this line was the manufacture of an enormous dish—so
vast in size he called it the shield of "Minerva the
city-keeper."
This was filled with the livers of a rare kind of fish,
(Possibly the "corasse," but not certainly known) the
brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of
flamingoes—Apicius was credited with the discovery that
the tongues of flamingoes had a special delicacy of
flavour—and the small intestines of another fish,
equally rare with the first, and, equally difficult to
identify. These dainties had been collected by
specially commissioned persons from the eastern borders
of the Empire to the Pillars of Hercules. But
Vitellius' appetite did not restrict itself to these
costly viands. It was enormous, and its demands were
incessant. Even at a sacrifice he could not keep his
hands off the flesh and the salted meal; and he could
relish even the coarse food that could be bought in the
common cook-shops.

From the torpor into which his perpetual excesses
plunged him, he seems never to have roused himself
except to commit some fresh act of cruelty.
[178] He would make much of old friends, sharing with them,
it might be said, everything but the imperial power
itself, and then suddenly turn upon them, and put them
to death. To one who was suffering from fever he paid
what seemed to be a friendly visit, and mixed poison in
the cup of cold water he handed to the sick man. His
old creditors were made to suffer for the annoyance
which they had given him. Scarcely one was allowed to
escape.

On one occasion he was supposed to have pardoned the
offender, for after ordering him to execution, he
recalled him. "What a clement prince!" exclaimed the
courtiers. But the "clement prince" had done it only to
"feast his eyes," as he put it, with the sight of the
poor wretch's death. One wealthy man cried out as he
was being carried off by the executioner, "Sire, you
are my heir." Vitellius called for the man's will, and
finding he shared the inheritance with a freedman,
ordered the testator and his co-legatee to be put to
death. His victims were taken even from the lowest
classes; it was enough if a man was heard to wish bad
luck to the "Blues." That was thought to be treason to
the Emperor. The one memorable event of his reign is
related in the next chapter. It only remains to tell
the story of his end. When the troops of Vespasian's
lieutenants had found their way into the city, the
wretched man was paralysed
[179] by fear. His first idea was to make his way to his
private house, hide himself there or elsewhere for the
day, and fly on the morrow to Tarracona, where his
brother still had some troops. Then, to follow the
words of Tacitus, "with characteristic weakness, and
following the instincts of fear, which dreading
everything, shrinks most from what is immediately
before it, he retraced his steps to the desolate and
forsaken palace, whence even the meanest slaves had
fled or where they avoided his presence. The solitude
and silence of the place scared him; he tried the
closed doors, he shuddered in the empty chambers, till,
wearied out with his miserable wanderings, he concealed
himself in some wretched hiding-place, from which he
was dragged by the tribune Julius Placidus. His hands
were bound behind his back; and he was led along with
tattered robes, a revolting spectacle, amid the
execrations of many, the tears of none. The degradation
of his end had extinguished all pity.

One of the German soldiers met the party, he aimed a
deadly blow at Vitellius, perhaps in anger, perhaps
wishing to put him out of his misery. Possibly the blow
was meant for the Tribune. Anyhow it cut off that
officer's ear, and the soldier was immediately
despatched. The fallen Emperor, compelled by
threatening swords, first to raise his face and offer
it to insulting blows, then to behold his own statues
[180] falling round him, and more than once to look at the
hustings and the spot where Galba was slain, was then
driven along till they reached the Gemoniæ, the place
where the corpse of Flavius Sabinus had lain. One
speech only was heard from him showing a spirit not
utterly degraded, when to the insults of a Tribune he
answered, "Yet I was your Emperor." Then he fell under
a shower of blows, the mob reviling him when he was
dead as heartlessly as they had flattered him when he
was alive.

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